Invoice financing with SEB

Factoring service at SEB. Invoice financing is an effective way to quickly improve your company's liquidity. With accounts receivable as security you free up capital straight away and can finance your company's growth smoothly.

Invoice financing is an effective way to quickly improve your company’s liquidity. With accounts receivable as security you free up capital straight away and can finance your company’s growth smoothly.

Kleer and SEB have developed a flow together that is largely automated. For you as a customer this means less administration, because certain reports are sent automatically between Kleer and SEB.

To start using this service, simply contact your business adviser at SEB. Also contact your contact person at Kleer, because we want to support you throughout the process.

Flow chart for the service

Flow chart for the service (screenshot 1 of 2)

Flow chart for the service (screenshot 2 of 2)

Part 1: From invoicing to payout of the loan. These four processes take place once a week or once a month.

Part 2: Reconciliation of Kleer and SEB, and adjustment of any misdirected payments by you as the customer every Tuesday.

Routines you need to follow to use this service

Invoicing takes place either once a month or once a week.
Invoicing and the pledge file are to be sent on the same day.
Adjustment of any misdirected payments takes place every Tuesday.

The second point means that you should preferably invoice every Tuesday or at the beginning of the month and, straight after invoicing (the same day you authorise the customer invoices), send the pledge file to SEB by 14:00 at the latest. So you need to authorise the customer invoices in Kleer and send the pledge file to SEB on the same day. Read more under step 1.

Which invoices can you borrow against?

Customer invoices issued to companies in the Nordic countries (excl. Iceland), Germany, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Wales, England and South Korea.
Except for invoices to related companies. Sometimes other customers are excluded as well. SEB will let you know if so.
You only need to tell your Kleer consultant which customers are to be excluded, and we at Kleer take care of the rest.
When you then invoice, you do exactly as usual. The Kleer system automatically detects which invoices are to be included in the pledge and makes sure the right text is on the invoices.

You can see which customers are included on the customer card, in the checkbox Included in SEB borrowing. The information is also available as the column Included in factoring furthest to the right in the export of the customer list to Excel and PDF. It shows the name of the factoring service for the customers that are included, and the cell is empty for the others. The column exists only for companies that have a factoring integration that uses the marking.

This is what you do as a customer

Invoice once a month or once a week.
Send the pledge file to SEB on the same day as invoicing. The file is easy to produce with one click in Kleer, see the report “Factoring report”. Read more under step 1.
Adjust for any misdirected payments every Tuesday. See step 2.

This is what Kleer does

Automatically sends a reconciliation report of the pledged accounts receivable to SEB every Wednesday.
Reconciles the balance of the factoring account monthly. See step 3.

This is what SEB does

Reconciles the pledged accounts receivable weekly (or at another interval depending on your agreement). See step 4.

The four steps of the flow

1. Send the pledge file

1.1 When you have finished the week’s or month’s invoicing, you send the pledge file to SEB on the same day (by 14:00 at the latest, and sign by 16:00 at the latest). You find the pledge file in the system under Other reports > Factoring report.

Before you send the file, check that:

the date range in the report “Factoring report” is correct (the invoice date decides).
an invoice is not submitted twice for pledging.
all customer invoices that are to be included in the file are authorised, and that you do not invoice any customer in the period concerned (the period you are submitting a pledge for) afterwards. If such a situation does arise, you need to submit one more pledge file specifically for that invoice. Tip! If you forget to invoice a customer and have already sent the pledge file, you can solve it by moving the invoice date forward to the next period that you have not yet sent a pledge file for. The invoice is then included in the next pledge file.
all customers have a customer number (if a customer number is missing, you can easily add it directly on the customer card in the customer register).

1.2 Leave the box “Export without headers and footers” checked, as it already is, click Export to Excel, name the file “Invoice journal as per MMYY companyname” and send it to admin.factoring@seb.se. Name the subject line of the email “agreement number, RSCF Digital”. You get the agreement number from SEB.

1.3 A couple of hours later you receive an email from SEB saying that you can log in to RSCF Online and sign the pledge file. If you want the money paid out the same day, send the file by 14:00 at the latest and sign by 16:00 at the latest.

2. Adjust any misdirected payments weekly on Tuesdays

Kleer automatically sends a reconciliation report of the pledged accounts receivable to SEB every Wednesday. For SEB to have up-to-date figures when it carries out its reconciliation from Wednesday onwards, you need to adjust for misdirected payments on Tuesdays.

You as a customer need to:

Trace misdirected payments that were paid to the regular bank account, and make transfers for the misdirected amount to the factoring account. You find the bank account in the balance sheet in Kleer, where it is usually called 1930. This applies to pledged invoices where customers have kept paying to your bank account instead of to the factoring account. If you do not make the transfer for misdirected payments, SEB gets a difference in its reconciliation. See the guide below for how to do this.
Trace misdirected payments that were paid to the factoring account, and inform SEB at clientservices.factoring@seb.se about the misdirected payments paid into the factoring account. You find the factoring account in the balance sheet in Kleer, where it is usually called 28XX/24XX. This applies to invoices that are not pledged but were wrongly paid into the factoring account. State which invoices and amounts it concerns when you contact SEB. When SEB is informed, it can adjust its ledger. If you do not inform SEB, it gets a difference in its reconciliation.

How to do it:

Go to Reports > Balance sheet and click into the regular bank account. In the search box at the top, type “Customer invoice” and click “Show”.
You now see all the customer invoices that were paid into that account.
Check/trace all customer invoices that were wrongly paid into the regular bank account (see tips on how to do this under step 8).
Add up the amount for all the invoices that were paid wrongly (since the last time you made the transfer for misdirected payments).
Make one lump-sum transfer from the regular bank account to the factoring account. You do not need to enter a message with the transfer. If the transfer concerns misdirected payments for, say, month 3, but the transfer is not made until month 4, you need to inform SEB at clientservices.factoring@seb.se and state which amount you transferred for misdirected payments concerning month 3. SEB can then take this transfer into account in the monthly reconciliation of month 3. Otherwise SEB gets a difference in the reconciliation.
Then trace misdirected payments to the factoring account (usually account 24XX/28XX) using the same method as above.
Inform SEB at clientservices.factoring@seb.se which invoices were paid wrongly. That is, which invoices that are not pledged were paid into the factoring account. SEB can then take this into account in its reconciliation. Otherwise SEB gets a difference in the reconciliation and will probably contact you so that you can sort out what the difference is due to.
Remind the customers who paid to the wrong account to pay to the right bankgiro next time, which reduces the administration around this manual routine in future.

Tips on how to trace which invoices were paid wrongly

Suggestion 1: You start from the invoice number, that is, you know or can find out that all invoices with a number higher than XXXX are part of the financing (except for countries that are not approved, customers that are not approved and related companies).

Suggestion 2: You start from the report “Factoring report” and set the date range from the start of the service to today’s date. You then see all the invoices that are part of the financing.

Suggestion 3: You open the PDF files of all invoices that have been paid, in the far right-hand corner. If the invoice has the text “Vår fordran enligt denna faktura har överlåtits till - och ska betalas till - Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ). Ange alltid fakturanummer vid betalning” (Our claim under this invoice has been assigned to, and is to be paid to, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ). Always state the invoice number when paying) at the bottom, it belongs to the financing, and the other way round when the text is missing.

On that basis you check payments on account 19XX (the regular bank account) and account 24XX/28XX (the factoring account).

In future we at Kleer hope to provide a smooth report for easily tracing misdirected payments, but for now the handling is as described above. Feel free to ask your Kleer consultant if you need tips on the smoothest way to do this manual routine, or if you wonder about anything in the description above.

3. Reconciliation of the factoring account

Every month Kleer checks that the factoring account in Kleer (usually account 24XX/28XX) has the same balance as at SEB.

4. Reconciliation of the pledged ledger

SEB checks that its accounts receivable ledger agrees with the reconciliation report that Kleer sends automatically to SEB every Wednesday.

The reconciliation report shows the pledged accounts receivable and includes all invoices that are authorised and therefore part of the pledge. The reconciliation report is the report “Accounts receivable list” (with the box “Only factoring” checked), found under Reports > Other reports. See below.

Credit an invoice

Was an invoice sent by mistake and you want to credit it? No problem, you create a credit note as usual, but make sure that you:

Double-check that the checkbox “Included in SEB borrowing” on the customer card is still checked
Enter an invoice date in a period for which the pledge file has not been submitted yet. Otherwise it is easy to forget to send a pledge file for that particular invoice, and SEB then gets a difference in its reconciliation.

Things to keep in mind

Set up an internal routine at your company so that all customer invoices are authorised and sent on a set date or weekday. You need to make sure that all invoices that are to be part of the period’s pledge file are authorised before you send the file to SEB. Otherwise the invoices are not included in the file. The invoices are included in the file (which you get from the report “Factoring report”) when they are authorised.
Save all the pledge files you have sent to SEB internally. Then you can easily find out which invoices you have sent to SEB for pledging if you become unsure.
If you credit an invoice that is part of the pledge, enter an invoice date in a period for which a pledge file has not been submitted yet. Otherwise it is easy to forget to send a pledge file for that particular invoice, and SEB then gets a difference in its reconciliation.
From the moment we at Kleer activate the integration (the pledging) in Kleer, all invoices you authorise after that point are included in the pledge automatically. If you then credit invoices that were not originally part of the pledge, it is entirely correct that these credit notes are included in the pledge.
If you do not use the loan some months, customer payments flow straight through the factoring account. SEB never holds on to any money.
If you want to see the reconciliation report that is sent automatically from Kleer to SEB, it corresponds to the “Accounts receivable list” (with the box “Only factoring” checked) found under Reports > Other reports. See the screenshot above.

An example of what happens at invoicing and pledging

Assume you invoice your customers 3’’ and 2’’ is to be included in the pledge.
The Kleer system automatically detects which invoices are to be part of the pledge and makes sure the right text is on the invoice templates.
These 2’’ show up (after the invoices are authorised) in the pledge file (the report “Factoring report”) that you send to SEB’s portal RSCF Online and sign.
SEB registers a pledged accounts receivable ledger of 2’’ and pays out the loan if you have requested a payout.
As customers pay into the factoring account, SEB offsets the payments against the pledged accounts receivable and continuously pays these payments out to your regular bank account.
Kleer sends a reconciliation report of the pledged accounts receivable to SEB every Wednesday.
SEB checks that the reconciliation report from Kleer shows the same amount, that is, the same remaining receivables, as SEB has registered in its system.

If SEB contacts you about a difference in the reconciliation, follow these points:

Check that all transactions for the period before the reconciliation date have been handled. You find unhandled transactions in the menu in Kleer. Payments to the factoring account that are not allocated to a customer invoice create differences.
You have forgotten to send a pledge file for a certain period (all invoices are to be submitted in a pledge file whether or not you want to use the loan for a period).
Your customers have paid into the wrong account/bankgiro and you have forgotten to make the transfer for this and/or inform SEB. You need to adjust for misdirected payments in both directions. That is, both those made to the regular bank account and those to the factoring account. See step 2.
Transactions on the factoring account at SEB lag by 1 day compared with Kleer.
Send the updated pledged accounts receivable to SEB after you have checked the steps above, with information about the misdirected payments. You find the report under Accounts receivable list (with the box “Only factoring” checked), found under Insights > Other reports.

Who should you contact?

admin.factoring@seb.se: Handles the reconciliation report and the pledge file. All correspondence is in English.
clientservices.factoring@seb.se: Questions of an ongoing nature, for example differences. Correspondence in Swedish is fine.
Your contact person at Kleer: If you have questions about the reconciliation of the factoring account, or need support and tips connected to the Kleer system. Kleer and SEB work closely together, and together with you we try to make the cooperation work as well as possible. If you find it hard to get a good routine around this service, please contact us at Kleer and we will do our best to find a solution.